


you might make it (by the skin of your teeth)

by ceserabeau



Series: Sterek AU One shots [10]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, M/M, Mad Max - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 05:32:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4209825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceserabeau/pseuds/ceserabeau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Down on the sand, Lydia’s head turns towards the desert, her hair fanning out like a bird taking flight. “They’re coming,” she says, and points towards where the world is lost to the heat-haze.</p><p>Mad Max AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	you might make it (by the skin of your teeth)

**Author's Note:**

> Mad Max AU. Title from _Bartholomew_ by The Silent Comedy.

In the endless emptiness of sand and sky, the war rig isn’t hard to spot. It’s still groaning when Stiles gets to it, great clouds of dust billowing out around it as the man in the cab tries desperately to start it up again.

Behind him the wives pause. Stiles watches the way they huddle together like children, arms curved around each other. _Fragile_ , he thinks, then remembers the way they fought for him, chains wrapped around their hands to pull the attackers off of him.

He creeps along the side of the rig, feeling the heat radiating from the metal, from the sand beneath his feet. The wind blows the bloodbag’s voice back to him, his grumbles as he fights with the engine.

“There’s a kill switch,” Stiles calls as he approaches. “I’m the only one that knows the code. The rig’s not going anywhere without me.”

The bloodbag’s head appears in the window, still with the cage wrapped around his head. “Get in then,” he growls.

Stiles shakes his head, gestures with his metal arm to the wives who are hovering, nervous. “Not without them.”

Beneath the metal, the man’s mouth twists in contempt. “Then we wait,” and he turns away.

The wives shift restlessly in the dust. “We’re going to die,” Malia murmurs.

Stiles climbs up the rig until he can put his head through the open window, and comes face to face with his own gun, barrel tucked up under his chin. He feels it press against the soft skin of his throat when he speaks.

“You’re relying on the gratitude of a very bad man,” he tells the bloodbag. “You’ve already made one of his wives bleed. How grateful do you really think he’s going to be?”

The man just blinks at him, expression almost bored.

It makes Stiles pause, and he considers him again. Wrinkles in his forehead from frowning, stretching out around his eyes from squinting at the sun. Dirt etched into his skin, so deep it’s like a second skin. Dark eyes, but the flash of the whites tells of nightmares and ghosts lurking. Probably handsome beneath all the dirt, but that’s not something Stiles needs to be thinking about now.

He’s seen people like this before, the ones who’ve lost more than their mind to the desert. Feral.Dangerous. This man is no different; he sees why Deucalion muzzled him. 

Down on the sand, Lydia’s head turns towards the desert, her hair fanning out like a bird taking flight. “They’re coming,” she says, and points towards where the world is lost to the heat-haze.

Stiles follows her finger: sure enough, dark shapes are cresting the horizon, trucks and bikes racing towards them.

Stiles changes tactics, trying to figure out which buttons he can press. “You’re sitting on two-thousand horsepower of nitro-boosted war-machine,” he says. “I’d say you’ve got a five minute head start before they catch you again.”

The bloodbag’s eyelids flicker, and Stiles knows he has him now. Wild animals don’t like to be chained; give them a taste of freedom and they’ll fight back twice as hard when their captors come back with the shackles.

Stiles holds back his grin; he’s got him now. “You want that thing off your face?” he asks.

The man’s head jerks, gaze suddenly interested. With a grunt, he slides back across the bench, giving Stiles the room to climb in. The gun never wavers.

He turns back to the wives. “Let’s go.”

They scrabble up into the cab, Allison and Erica bracketing Lydia, Kira and Malia, curled around them like they can protect them from what’s coming. The man shifts his gaze to them, something like shock flashing across his face.

Stiles uses his distraction to reach under the wheel where one of his guns is tucked, up near the switches. He might not have been born a warboy, but he knows how to fight like one: if he can reach it or the knife alongside it, get it up in the bloodbag’s face then they’re free and clear.

But the man’s quicker, his hand snapping around Stiles’ wrist. “No,” he growls, and puts his gun to Stiles’ throat again as he reaches down to pull the gun from its holster, the blade from its sheath. “Where’re the rest?”

Stiles narrows his eyes. “I’m not telling you, man,” he says, leaning over to flick the switches with his good hand. “You want them, you can find them yourself.”

He turns the key. The rig groans for a long moment, then the engine catches and roars around them. He presses the gas as the man starts to check the cab for guns, shoving what he finds into the tool bag he’s emptied onto the floor.

The sand kicks up a cloud in their wake, and over the rumble of the engine, Stiles asks, “What’s your name? What do we call you?”

The man glances over at him, eyes narrowed and suspicious. “Doesn’t matter,” he snaps.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “I guess I’ll call you fool then.”

The man glares, then his mouth shifts like he’s trying to find the right word. Stiles wonders if he even knows any more, if the sand and heat took that along with the rest of him.

Then: “Derek. My name is Derek,” tripping out unexpectedly.

Stiles nods, satisfied. In the back the wives murmur, the name passing between them in a whisper. The cries of the war parties chase them across the burning wasteland.


End file.
